Reading for beginners

An experiment on my part to throw these reading exercises at you
Its something ive wanted to for a long time, since a lot of my students have trouble learning the fretboard.
I try to teach you basic reading at the same time – two flies one swat;-)
We dont go above 3rd fret in these first exercises and only learn the natural notes of the musical alphabet (A B C D E F G) – no sharps and flats just yet.
This is only about note reading and note naming, later ill add basic harmony, scale intervals etc
Its a work in progress, frequently updated – some basic introductory explanations of the music staff and symbols not yet completed (for now go to studybass.com for that), and feel free to comment.
And dont go to the next exercise before you master the previous

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pganewman said,

Right on, thanks, wish i didn’t have to work today, i would spend it all day checking out the site. Tomorrow….

MarloweDK said,

June 12, 2011
@ 9:25 am

No, links was missing, corrected now, thank you

pganewman said,

June 12, 2011
@ 1:14 am

im not seeing this lesson, this is a cool site, maybe im doing something wrong?

xarls said,

May 16, 2011
@ 11:11 pm

Thank you !!!
This is a great place, go on !!

jazznfusion said,

February 10, 2011
@ 5:17 am

Good lesson! Im a beginner but a little beyond this, i hope to see more lessons like this though.

MarloweDK said,

January 2, 2011
@ 12:06 pm

These reading exercises are for beginners, and dont go further than than 4th fret, so if you are allready on 7th fret you are intermediate;-)
Generally when reading notation its up to the musician to decide in which position to play unless staed in the music/transcription.

73BLow said,

January 1, 2011
@ 4:13 pm

When reading notation, how do I know if I should use the “A” on the 2nd fret of the “G” String or at the 7th fret of the “D” string? Is it just the economy of motion that I should play the note that is easiest to reach from the last note played or is there something in the notation that I am missing?

Thanks,

B.Low

JeffB said,

Blyss said,

April 25, 2009
@ 1:05 am

Very cool Thomas! You know – last quarter I had to take low brass , flute and sax. The flute/sax instructor had us use the Essential Elements books and that helped me quite a bit with the winds thing and the backing tracks didn’t “suck”…ok, they sucked but not as bad as they could have sucked. Anyway, I decided to get the Essential elements Electric Bass book. Now, this is a band method and doesn’t really deal with “being a bass player” – HOWEVER, when I slipped it on a couple of my students they were amazed at how fast that the were reading.http://www.portlandmusiccompany.com/books/00862581.html